Page 40 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

“I would, if he is civil.”

“Civil enough. It’s only the grey that’s a heathen.”

She let herself into the box, ran her palm down the cannon from knee to fetlock, and pressed her thumb gently along the inside of the leg. “It is warm. Here, low down, and the pastern with it. Has he been standing in the wet?”

“The near boxes flood when the yard gutter blocks, and the gutter’s been blocked since Lady Day. I’ve asked twice.”

“Then ask me, and consider it answered.” She straightened and wiped her hand on her skirt without a thought for the skirt. “Clear the gutter this week, stand him dry, and poultice the leg morning and night. If the heat is gone in seven days it was the standing, and we have saved the farrier a journey and the horse a fright.”

“That is the very thing I’d have said, Your Grace, if a soul in this yard had thought to ask the head groom.”

“I am asking him. Loudly, if it helps.”

He almost smiled, which she suspected was a rare event, and led her on to the last stall on the right, where a chestnut mare had put her head over the door.

“That one is yours.”

Ellen looked at him.

“Came up from a stud in Leicestershire ten days back, before ever you set foot here. His Grace wrote for a quiet mouth and a good temper, well up to a lady’s weight, and not a slug, and he said he would know the difference.” He rubbed the mare’s nose. “Her name’s Heather. She has stood here eating her head off a week and a half, waiting on you, and between us I think she has begun to take it personal.”

The mare blew softly, and the warm breath of it stirred the loose hair at Ellen’s temple.

“Where did the name come from?”

“That I couldn’t say. Came up with her on the papers.” He scratched the white blaze. “Six years old. Foaled the spring the late duke went, if you trace it back, which the old duchess would have called an omen one way or the other.”

“You knew the duchess.”

“Forty years I’ve been in this yard, Your Grace. I put her up the first morning she came here a bride, same as I’m like to put you up this afternoon.” He said it plainly, with no weight on it, and the weight came anyway. “There’s not been a lady’s saddle horse stood in these boxes since the day we buried her. His Grace rode out with his mother every morning she was living, and not one morning after, not in eleven years, till he wrote me that letter about a quiet mouth.”

Ellen put her hand flat on the long chestnut neck and felt the heat of the animal come up through her palm. “He bought me a horse.”

“He did, Your Grace.”

“He will not say good morning to me across his own breakfast table.” Her hand stayed where it was. “And he sat down in London and wrote a letter about a quiet mouth and a good temper, and threatened his own groom over the soundness of her near fore.”

“He did that as well.”

“I do not understand him at all, Hibbert.”

“No soul alive manages it, my lady, and I have spent nigh forty years trying to prove otherwise.” He gathered the halter off his shoulder. “But I’ll tell you he asked me a question in that letter he’s never asked me before, which was whether the mare had a kind eye. A man don’t fret over a kind eye for a horse he means to leave standing in a box.”

She turned her face into the mare’s mane a moment, where no one could watch, and when she lifted it again her eyes were dry enough to pass. “I should like to ride her after luncheon, while the light holds. Will she take a side-saddle quietly the first time?”

“Quiet as you please. I’ll lunge her of a morning the first week regardless, and you’ll thank me the day the pheasants get up.”

“Thank you, Hibbert. For the leg, and all of your assistance.”

“Welcome to Wrenfield, Your Grace.” He touched his cap. “It is the first sensible quarter-hour this yard has had since the old duchess departed from this world.”

She went back to the house the long way, round by the garden wall, and that was how she came to the kitchen garden, and stopped at the gate.

A spade-bearded man straightened from his forking at the far end and came up the path wiping his hands. “Your Grace. You’ll forgive the state of it.”

“How long has it been let go?”

“Coyne, my lady. Head gardener. There’s been no mistress to set a hand to the kitchen garden nor the stillroom since the late duchess passed, and that is eleven years gone.”